As we recognize the courage of human rights defenders everywhere, let us commit to protect those who seek truth and justice, and provide victims with effective remedies and restore their dignity.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres

The Right to the Truth
The right to the truth is often invoked in the context of gross violations of human rights
and grave breaches of humanitarian law. The relatives of victims of summary executions, enforced disappearance, missing persons, abducted children, torture, require to know what happened to them. The right to the truth implies knowing the full and complete truth as to the events that transpired, their specific circumstances, and who participated in them, including knowing the circumstances in which the violations took place, as well as the reasons for them.

Background
On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as
the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights
Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

The date was chosen because on 24 March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of
El Salvador was assassinated, after denouncing violations of human rights.

In a study conducted in 2006 the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
concluded that the right to the truth about gross human rights violations and serious
violations of human rights law is an inalienable and autonomous right, linked to the duty
and obligation of the State to protect and guarantee human rights, to conduct effective
investigations and to guarantee effective remedy and reparations.

The study affirms that the right to the truth implies knowing the full and complete truth as to the events that transpired, their specific circumstances, and who participated in them, including knowing the circumstances in which the violations took place, as well as the reasons for them.

In a 2009 report on the Right to the Truth , the Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights identified best practices for the effective implementation of this right, in
particular practices relating to archives and records concerning gross violations of human rights, and programmes on the protection of witnesses and other persons involved in trials connected with such violations.

The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador was established in accordance with the
Mexico Agreements of 27 April 1991 to investigate serious acts of violence that had
occurred since 1980 and whose impact on society was deemed to require an urgent public knowledge of the truth. In its report of 15 March 1993 , the Commission documented the facts of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero by pro-government forces, the so-called “death squads”. He was shot dead by an assassin as he celebrated mass on 24 March 1980.

Dearest Rosemary,
It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The streets are that empty. It seems as though the bulk of the city has retreated to their quarters, rightfully so. At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources.

The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us.

You should see the square, oh, it is terrible. I weep for the damned eventualities this
future brings. The long afternoons rolling forward slowly on the ever-slick bottomless
highball. Z. says it’s no excuse to drink, but I just can’t seem to steady my hand.

In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I
can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while. And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening’s cast, I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better tomorrow.

Faithfully yours,
F Scott Fitzgerald

• Dr. Nastour Rakhshani, a painter and art researcher, receives the Nowruz Award for
  “Personality of the Year in Art and Culture” for:
  
• A lifetime of tireless work as a valued, admired, and irredentist artist at home and in asylum
• Striving to gain a status similar to that of European artists
• His unique style, combining the art of both Eastern and Western paintings
• Representing Iran and Iranians at major European exhibitions
• Many years of working to introduce Iranian art and culture abroad
• Representing the history and culture of ancient Iran through painting national figures and displaying Iran’s works of architecture and civilization

Dr. Nastour Rakhshani Bio:
Dr. Nastour Rakhshani was born in Tehran in 1947, where he spent his childhood and
adolescence.
He held an interest in painting since childhood and spent a great deal of time on his craft. At the age of sixteen, he participated in a Teen Painting Exhibition, of which he was one of the winners.
Dr. Rakhshani graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Tehran University, and in the same year, during the Mehregan festival, he received the “Gold Medal of Culture” from the Shah of Iran.
After graduation, he displayed his work in several major exhibitions. He also produced
illustrations for several children’s books during his military service.
In 1974, Rakhshani left Iran for France where he enrolled at the Sorbonne University in Paris to study aesthetics.
At the time of the Islamic Revolution and during the political changes occurring in Iran, he returned home and taught graphic arts and public design at the Faculty of Decorative Arts. He quickly became aware of the violent and anti-Iranian nature of the Islamic Republic, and began creating opposition posters against the regime. In 1983, when many of his associates were imprisoned or executed and his life was threatened, he secretly fled Iran through Kurdistan.
Through Turkey, and with the help of the French Consulate, he returned to France and continued on his studies.
In 1988, Rakhshani completed his Ph.D. thesis on “The Art of Graphic Art and Social
Campaigns in Iran” with a high honor, tres honorable.
Dr. Rakhshani’s work has been published in Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur, Jeune Afrique, La Cimade, La Chronique D’Amnesty International and a number of opposition papers (against the Iranian regime) outside Iran.

Professor Hooshang Ziaei, a well known Iranian expert on wildlife and environmental and natural resources, a scientific member and advisor at the Iranian Museum of Natural Resources, and a lecturer in the fields of wildlife management and biology at Iranian universities, is the recipient of this year’s “Personality of the Year in the Field of Natural Resources” and the recipient of the Nowruz Award for the following achievements:

• Over 50 years of continuous efforts to protect and preserve Iran’s natural heritage and environment
• Researching and publishing more than a dozen valuable books and articles related to Iran’s natural heritage
• Educating students, experts, and enthusiasts about natural heritage and the
  environment, and preparing them for the challenge of tackling further destruction of Iran’s environment
• Helping to preserve Iran’s Museum of Natural Resources and Wildlife
• Significant efforts to prevent illegal hunting practices

Professor Ziaei’s Bio:
Professor Ziaei began his research and development work several years before the Iranian revolution in 1979, managing and overseeing projects such as rescuing and preserving the Persian deer and lion as well as the International Asian Cheetah Conservation Project, for over forty years. In addition to executive and research positions, he has been teaching and educating young people and students about the environment, natural heritage, and especially wildlife. In addition to his college classes, he has written expert articles, books, and instructional videos. For many years, he has been teaching students in various disciplines related to the environment.
Professor Ziaei is also the creator of many educational research films including the Yellow Deer, Traditional Hunting Techniques, and Wildlife Values films. Additionally, he has been a guide and consultant for many environmental films on Iran’s natural life and heritage. Over the past few years, Professor Ziaei has fervently warned about the destruction of the environment in Iran and dangers to natural heritage.

Dr. Mohsen Banaei (Mazdak Bamdadan), a researcher, historian, author, and physician, is the recipient of the “Nowruz Award for Expert of Cultural Heritage of the Year” for the following achievements:

• Years of effort towards learning different languages to gain knowledge and understanding of the history of religions
•  Collecting authoritative research and works related to Iranian history and culture
• Having a clear and present view of the history and culture of Iran and Islam
• Utilizing a rational and critical approach towards those who have an antagonistic
  view of pre-Islamic history
• Unparalleled courage in telling historical facts in the context of scientific
  historiography
• Publishing a valuable book, The Dark Abyss of History, and presenting unique
  findings on one of the most important Iranian religions for the first time in the
  Persian language

Dr. Mohsen Banaie’s bio:
Dr. Mohsen Banaie was born on May 22, 1965 in Tehran, Iran. He spent most of his
childhood in the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan, before he later moved to Tehran.
Due to his bilingual childhood, he is capable of speaking both Persian and Azeri at a
native level. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, he visited many Iranian cities and
provinces, which encouraged him to read and engage with Iranian history and culture
from a young age. In 1985, he migrated to Germany and applied successfully for asylum to start a new life. Just three years later he began studying medicine at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, from which he successfully graduated with a PhD in 1994. In 1990 he also began to study comparative linguistics there with a scholarly focus on Iranian languages under the guidance of the professor Dr. Josef Elfenbein. Aside from his family, these two subjects dominated his later life. In 2001, Banaie became an author under the pseudonym Mazdak Bamdadan, under which
he has written and released more than 200 articles online about the Persian language.
Mazdak Bamdadan soon evolved to become a heavily discussed Persian writer as well as the leading scholar and pioneer of Islamic revisionism around world with an audience of thousands of readers.
Furthermore, he worked together with Inarah, a group of German scholars who act as the main initiators of Islamic revisionism, to write a German article, “Die dunkle Krypta,”
which appears in Inarah’s ninth anthology. He has also held two lectures at an
international symposium in 2018 and 2019. Banaie is also known for his four popular
lectures on Iranian culture and history, where he discussed controversial subjects like the lion and sun emblem as well as the popular but unofficial national anthem “Ey Iran,” as well as less controversial topics such as the historical and cultural background of
Ferdowsi’s famous Shahnameh and the relationship between Iranian writers and
physicians.
In November 2018, Banaie unveiled his true identity by publishing his first book titled
The dark crypt of history: How did Islam emerge?, where he discusses the congruency of the Quran and Islamic historiography, which accounts less than 5% according to him.
Mohsen Banaie currently lives in Cologne where he works as a physician. Along with
Persian, Azeri, and German, he also speaks English, Turkish, and Arabic.
He is living with his wife and two children in Colon, Germany